HENRY  G.  PEARSON 


BY 

EDWIN  L  GODKIN 


L< 


HENRY  G.  PEARSON 


DELIVERED   JUNE    21,    1894 
BY 

EDWIN   L  GODKIN 


NEW  YORK 
PRIVATELY  PRINTED 


T  MMEDIATELY  after  the  death  of  Mr.  Pearson,  a  spontaneous 
movement  took  place  to  commemorate  in  some  suitable 
way  his  character  and  public  services.  A  committee  was 
constituted,  consisting  of  the  following  gentlemen  : 

George  William  Curtis,  R.  R.  Bowker,  Charles  R.  Miller,  Carl 
Schurz,  William  Potts,  Dorman  B.  Eaton,  Edwin  L.  Godkin, 
William  J.  Coombs,  Thomas  Maitland,  Dean  Sage,  Alexander 
Mackay-Smith,  Isidor  Straus.  Mr.  Curtis  was  chosen  Chairman 
of  the  Committee,  and  Mr.  Potts  Secretary  and  Treasurer.  Upon 
the  death  of  Mr.  Curtis,  Mr.  Schurz  became  Chairman. 

Measures  were  at  once  taken  to  raise  by  subscription  the  amount 
needed  for  the  form  of  monument  contemplated,  for  which  it  was 
deemed  that  between  three  and  four  thousand  dollars  would  be 
sufficient,  and  this  amount  was  promptly  furnished  by  those  to 
whom  Mr.  Pearson's  work  had  commended  itself. 

A  contract  was  made  with  Mr.  Daniel  C.  French,  the  eminent 
sculptor,  for  a  portrait  bust  of  bronze  of  heroic  size,  to  rest  upon 
a  suitable  pedestal  of  Swedish  granite.  It  was  originally  intended 
that  the  monument  should  be  erected  in  some  public  place  in  the 
open  air,  but  no  suitable  location  being  available,  it  was  finally  de- 
termined that  it  should  be  placed  in  the  southern  lobby  of  the 
general  post-office  at  New  York,  the  building  which  had  been  for 
so  many  years  the  scene  of  Mr.  Pearson's  labors. 

At  5  o'clock  on  the  afternoon  of  June  21,  1894,  in  the  presence 
of  a  large  number  of  persons,  many  of  them  connected  with  the 
postal  service,  the  monument  was  unveiled  with  simple  ceremonies 
by  Gen.  Thomas  L.  James,  who  was  Postmaster-General  of  the 
United  States  when  Mr.  Pearson  became  Postmaster  at  New 
York.  In  the  evening  of  the  same  day  a  meeting  was  held  at  the 
Berkeley  Lyceum,  in  that  city,  at  which  Mr.  Edwin  L.  Godkin,  a 
member  of  the  Memorial  Committee,  and  Editor  of  the  New 
York  Evening  Post,  delivered  the  address  given  in  the  following 
pages. 


Upon  the  pedestal  of  the  monument  appears  the  following  in- 
scription : 

HENRY  G.  PEARSON, 
Born  July  29,  1844.     Died  April  20,  1889. 

Postmaster  at  New  York 

April  i,  1881,  to  April  20,  1889. 

An  example  of  purest 

fidelity  to  official  duty. 


ADDRESS 


WE  have  met  this  evening  to  do  what,  without  explana- 
tion, would  to  a  stranger  seem  very  extraordinary — 
that  is,  to  pay  honor  to  the  memory  of  a  postmaster  for 
simply  having  done  his  duty  as  a  postmaster.  Henry  G.  Pearson, 
whose  memorial  bust  we  have  unveiled  to-day,  for  eight  years 
faithfully  and  efficiently  sorted  and  distributed  the  mails,  and  saw 
that  his  subordinates  did  their  duty,  at  the  leading  post-office  of 
the  country — this  and  nothing  more.  He  was  first  appointed  by 
President  Garfield,  which,  as  he  belonged  to  his  party,  was, 
perhaps,  not  unusual.  But  he  was  retained  in  office  by  President 
Cleveland,  and  it  is  this  retention  which  will  give  point  to  most  of 
what  I  am  about  to  say.  The  stranger  might,  therefore,  well  ask 
how  this  had  come  to  merit  extraordinary  posthumous  honors — 
whether  it  was  really  true  that  most  or  all  the  other  postmasters 
neglected  their  duty,  and  how  it  happened  that  the  regular 
postal  service  of  the  inhabitants  of  New  York  had  come  to  be 
heroic  work,  meriting  a  hero's  reward. 

To  answer  these  questions  fully  would  be  to  recount  the  whole 
history  of  the  civil  service  of  the  United  States.  This  I  do  not 
propose  to  do,  and  could  not  do,  even  if  I  had  time.  But  I  owe 
it  to  the  good  and  brave  man  of  whom  we  are  trying  to  keep  the 
public  permanently  in  mind,  to  say  enough  to  show  that  we  are 
not  really  making  too  much  of  him  ;  that  he  had  solid  claims  on 
the  gratitude  of  his  successors  and  of  the  public  of  this  city,  and 
that  if  there  should  ever  be  a  real,  thorough,  complete,  and  endur- 
ing reform  of  the  civil  service,  he  will  have  just  claims  to  be  con- 
sidered one  of  its  precursors. 

One  of  the  peculiarities  of  the  spoils  system  in  the  Federal  ser- 
vice is  that  it  is  mainly  visible  in  the  cities  and  large  towns,  and 
above  all  in  the  great  seaports.  The  country  people  know  little 
about  it.  What  they  see  of  Federal  officials  is  so  slight  that  they 
feel  that  so  much  agitation  over  the  mode  of  their  appointment  is 

3 


making  a  great  fuss  about  nothing.  This  has  always  been  one  of 
the  chief  difficulties  of  the  civil-service-reform  movement.  To 
give  it  life  and  vigor  and  point  it  has  to  be  carried  on  in  the 
neighborhood  of  a  great  custom-house  or  post-office,  or  else  at 
the  seat  of  government  itself — that  is,  in  some  place  where  the 
people  are  familiar  with  the  working  of  the  spoils  system  on  a 
great  scale.  The  countryman,  who  sees  nothing  in  a  change  of 
administration  but  a  change  of  United  States  marshals  or  the 
substitution  of  one  country  grocer  for  another  as  postmaster,  finds 
it  difficult  to  understand  what  a  prodigious  fountain  of  political 
corruption  a  large  custom-house  or  post-office  may  be  made. 
This  has  made  it  very  difficult  to  move  the  general  public  on  be- 
half of  the  reform,  to  bring  it  home  to  them,  in  short,  as  one  of 
the  burning  questions  of  the  day,  as  the  thing  which  stands  in 
the  way  of  much  legitimate  extension  of  governmental  functions. 

More  than  this,  it  has  concentrated  the  energies  of  the  reformer 
on  the  points  where  Federal  servants  most  abound — and,  above 
all,  on  the  Federal  offices  in  this  city.  It  has  compelled  us  to  talk 
and  act  as  if  the  purification  of  the  New  York  post-office  and 
custom-house  were  the  great  end  and  aim  of  our  agitation.  It 
has,  in  a  measure,  led  us  to  feel  that  if  we  get  a  good  man  put  at 
the  head  of  either  of  these  establishments  our  battle  is  won.  It 
is  at  these  points,  too,  that  the  spoils  system  makes  the  most  ener- 
getic resistance.  In  truth,  after  a  Presidential  election,  I  venture 
to  assert  that  there  is  no  consequence  of  victory,  legislative  or 
administrative,  which  for  weeks  and  months  so  occupies  the 
minds  of  men  interested  in  politics  in  this  city,  as  the  question 
who  is  to  be  postmaster  and  who  collector.  These  offices  are  to 
the  spoilsman  the  greatest  rewards  the  President  has  to  bestow, 
and  the  idea  that  they  will  not  be  bestowed  as  spoils  always  makes 
the  politicians  smile. 

For  fully  fifty  years,  except  during  Mr.  Pearson's  terms,  the 
postmastership  of  New  York  has  never  been  filled  except  for 
political  reasons,  and  with  political  men.  Never  during  that 
period,  except  in  his  case,  has  the  interest  of  the  public  mails 
been  the  leading  consideration  in  making  the  appointment.  The 
place  was  always  given  to  politicians  of  some  local  prominence, 
some  of  them  very  good  men,  in  the  belief  and  expectation  that 
they  would  use  it  to  reward  the  people  who  worked  at  the  main- 
tenance of  the  party  organization  in  this  city. 


This  mode  of  disposing  of  the  post-office  leads  me  to  say  what 
may  sound  like  an  apology  for  the  spoils  system,  but  which  the 
truth  of  history  calls  for.  Government  by  universal  suffrage, 
familiar,  natural,  and  time-honored  as  it  seems  to  some  of  us,  is  a 
new  and  modern  idea.  Until  the  beginning  of  this  century,  the 
notion  that  all  should  vote — the  ignorant  as  well  as  the  wise,  the 
poor  man  as  well  as  the  man  of  property — never  entered  into 
popular  thought.  It  is  really  an  outcome  of  our  own  Revolution 
and  of  the  French  Revolution.  But  those  who  introduced  it 
into  politics  had  no  idea  how  it  would  work.  They  were  used  to 
small  communities  in  which  every  man  knew  his  neighbor  and 
shared  his  interests  and  ideas.  Of  the  prodigious  masses  of  popu- 
lation which  have  sprung  up  in  all  modern  States  under  the  influ- 
ence of  manufactures,  improved  agriculture,  locomotion,  and 
sanitation,  they  had  no  foresight  or  conception.  Moreover,  rea- 
soning from  what  they  saw  around  them,  they  thought  that  with 
the  power  to  vote  would  come  eagerness  to  vote,  and  that  there 
never  would  be  any  difficulty  in  getting  people  to  the  polls.  The 
trouble  of  finding  candidates,  too,  acceptable  to  very  large  bodies 
of  men  never  dawned  on  them.  Such  things  in  old  times  were 
settled  by  half-a-dozen  gentlemen  round  a  dinner-table,  or  by 
some  individual  taking  it  into  his  head  to  be  a  candidate  and 
offering  himself  to  the  electors.  For  a  while  the  work  of  presi- 
dential nomination  with  us  was  done  by  a  volunteer  committee  of 
Congress.  But  I  do  not  think  I  am  rash  in  saying  that  the  men 
of  1820  had  no  more  idea  of  our  present  nominating  machinery, 
from  the  primaries  up  to  the  national  convention,  than  they  had 
of  railways  and  telegraphs  and  telephones.  Its  complication  is 
very  great,  and  increases  in  the  ratio  of  the  voting  mass.  More- 
over, it  is  not  a  machine  which  once  started  will  work  of  itself. 
It  has  to  be  kept  in  order  by  incessant  activity  from  year's  end  to 
year's  end.  The  managers  can  never  for  a  day  take  their  hands 
off  it.  The  voting  multitude  has  to  be  persuaded,  placated,  and 
informed  ;  the  ignorant  have  to  be  enlightened,  and  the  indiffer- 
ent have  to  be  aroused,  and  the  lazy  have  to  be  got  to  vote,  and 
all  this  not  in  one  day,  but  more  or  less  every  day  in  the  year. 

Now,  it  was  not  unnatural  that  the  fathers  or  conceivers  of 
universal  suffrage,  so  to  speak,  as  they  found  this  work  growing 
on  their  hands,  should,  in  looking  about  for  some  one  to  do  it, 
have  hit  upon  the  plan  of  making  the  office-holders  do  it,  and 


making  their  salaries  the  reward  of  both  their  official  and  party 
service.  I  am  not  either  praising  or  condemning  or  excusing 
them.  I  am  simply  explaining.  It  was  a  policy  which  met  a 
present  and  pressing  need,  and  it  seemed  to  add  considerably  to 
the  interest  and  excitement  of  elections.  These  elections  became 
what  the  day  of  battle  is  to  an  army,  the  test  of  all  the  drill  and 
discipline  and  organization  of  preceding  years,  of  the  sagacity  of 
leaders  and  the  fidelity  of  followers.  It  soon  became  very  popu- 
lar, and  more  than  this  as  it  became  familiar.  It  came  to  appear 
the  natural,  necessary,  and  above  all  the  American  way  of  pre- 
paring for  political  victory  and  of  filling  offices.  National  feeling 
was  enlisted  on  its  side.  Other  ways,  or  what  are  called  "  busi- 
ness ways,"  got  to  look  foreign,  monarchical,  or,  worse  still, 
"  English." 

I  mention  this  as  perhaps  the  greatest  difficulty  the  civil-service 
reformers  had  to  face  when  they  began  their  agitation  thirty  years 
ago.  They  found  the  spoils  system  thoroughly  in  possession  of 
the  public  mind,  with  a  certain  show  of  utility  behind  it,  and  with 
national  feeling  to  a  certain  degree  enlisted  in  its  favor.  I  re- 
member, when  Mr.  Jenckes  initiated  the  movement  for  a  change, 
it  was  looked  on  as  in  some  degree  a  Prussian  whimsey — some- 
thing the  long-haired  people  were  taking  up  to  fill  up'  their  time, 
now  that  slavery  was  abolished.  People  got  to  believe  that  in  no 
other  way  could  the  work  of  politics  be  carried  on  ;  that  the 
office-holders  must  work  or  elections  could  not  be  won.  Proba- 
bly the  formidable  difficulty  which  the  reformers  had  to  encounter 
was  this  widely  diffused  feeling  of  the  necessity  of  the  thing,  the 
belief  that  party  government  could  not  be  carried  on  without  it. 
One  of  our  best  weapons  in  this  debate  has  been  the  example  of 
England,  the  only  country  in  the  world  whose  political  institutions 
and  political  habits  resemble  our  own,  and  in  which,  although 
not  over  thirty  offices  are  vacated  on  the  change  of  ministry,  the 
excitement  of  a  general  election  reaches  fever  heat,  and  speakers 
and  money  abound.  Another,  and  possibly  a  more  powerful  one, 
has  been  the  fact  that  among  ourselves  the  party  which  drives 
another  out  of  power  always  wins  without  the  help  of  the  offices. 
To  this  it  may  be  answered  that  the  opposition  also  works  hard 
because  it  expects  office  if  it  wins  ;  but  to  the  argument  that  the 
most  lavish  use  of  the  offices  has  never  yet  sufficed  to  keep  the 
party  in  power,  there  is  no  good  answer.  I  do  not  like  to  cite 


particular  illustrations,  because  it  might  seem  what  is  called  in- 
vidious. But  I  may  make  the  general  statement  that  every  Presi- 
dent who,  during  the  last  fifty  years,  has  failed  to  get  a  renomina- 
tion  or  re-election  has  failed  in  spite  of  the  vigorous  use  of  all  the 
patronage  at  his  command,  and  that  every  opposition  candidate 
who  has  succeeded  has  succeeded  without  anything  better  to  offer 
than  promises,  which  are  by  general  consent  treated  in  political 
circles  as  an  uncommonly  weak  reliance.  Anyhow,  whatever 
view  we  may  take  of  the  question  of  necessity,  the  general  effect 
of  the  system  on  our  politics  has  been  the  effect  of  a  standing 
army  on  the  militia.  The  existence  of  a  large  body  of  regulars, 
as  I  may  call  them,  among  us  has  been  to  produce  the  impression 
that  the  winning  of  votes  at  an  election,  the  persuasion  of  people 
to  elect  this  man  and  reject  that  one,  in  which  the  work  of  popu- 
lar government  consists,  was  the  duty  of  the  office-holder  only  or 
mainly  ;  that  it  was  something  which  only  devolved  secondarily, 
or  not  at  all,  on  other  members  of  the  party,  and  that  as  long  as 
these  office-holders  were  ready  to  do  it,  other  people  need  only 
take  a  languid  interest  in  it.  The  general  result  is  that  although 
we  talk  of  the  excitement  of  a  presidential  election  as  something 
prodigious  and  unparalleled,  it  is  not  really  so  great  and  does  not 
move  nearly  so  many  people  as  a  general  election  in  England. 
There  is  more  racket  made  by  our  newspapers,  and  more  of 
spectacular  modes  of  working  up  enthusiasm,  but  the  active  par- 
ticipation in  the  work  of  persuasion  of  all  classes  and  conditions 
of  men  is,  I  think,  greater  there  than  it  is  here. 

Another  consideration,  and  a  more  important  one,  is,  I  think, 
that  the  electioneering  work  of  office-holders  is  more  likely  to  lead 
to  corruption  than  that  of  volunteers.  A  man  who  feels  he  is 
working  for  money,  or,  in  other  words,  for  his  bread  and  butter, 
not  unnaturally  seeks  to  arouse  the  same  motives  in  others.  It 
would  be  very  hard  for  him  to  excite  in  others  an  enthusiasm 
which  he  does  not  himself  feel,  or  to  appeal  to  a  disinterestedness 
which  he  is  not  able  to  exhibit  in  his  own  person.  So  I  venture 
on  the  opinion — which  I  admit  is  purely  speculative — that  can- 
vassing done  by  office-holders  is  necessarily  more  expensive  than 
that  done  by  outsiders,  or,  rather,  by  the  general  public.  This 
is,  however,  neither  here  nor  there,  as  the  saying  is.  What  I  have 
been  seeking  to  bring  home  to  you  is  the  exceeding  difficulty  in 
1884  of  procuring  such  an  appointment  as  that  of  Mr.  Pearson  to 


8 

the  New  York  post-office  by  a  President  of  the  opposite  party,  in 
the  teeth  of  the  obstacles  to  it  presented  by  long-established  usage 
and  what  really  seemed  the  necessities  of  the  case.  It  is  quite 
true  that  not  only  Mr.  Cleveland,  but  a  very  large  proportion  of 
the  public  men  of  the  party  which  came  into  power  with  him, 
were  pledged,  or  in  some  manner  committed,  to  the  principle  of 
the  merit  system.  But,  gentlemen,  we  all  know  the  enormous 
distance  which  separates  theory  from  practice.  There  is  not  one 
of  us  who  does  not  feel  how  much  easier  it  is  to  approve  than  to 
act.  It  is  a  common  human  experience  that,  just  as  men  when 
they  come  into  possession  of  great  wealth  seldom  or  never  do  the 
things  they  thought  they  would  do  when  they  were  poor,  so  also, 
when  men  come  into  power,  they  seldom  incline  to  the  things 
which  moved  them  before  they  achieved  power.  From  the  new 
standpoint  come  new  ideas.  I  remember  when  civil-service  re- 
form first  began  to  be  discussed  in  Congress  and  the  first  attempts 
were  made  to  pass  the  present  civil-service  act,  the  number  of 
members  who  were  in  favor  of  civil-service  reform,  but  could  not 
bring  themselves  to  support  "  this  particular  measure,"  was  very 
large.  It  was  a  good  while  before  "  this  particular  measure  "  was 
able  to  find  any  favor.  Any  other  measure  that  could  be  thought 
of  was  apparently  always  more  meritorious  than  the  one  before 
the  House. 

You  are  familiar,  too,  with  the  way  each  of  our  great  parties 
feels  about  the  existing  law,  as  administered  by  the  other  party. 
Neither  ever  owns  itself  as  hostile  to  reform  in  general,  but  the 
reform  the  other  party  is  administering  is  never  real  reform,  it  is 
something  monstrous,  abnormal,  hybrid,  and  debauching.  But 
in  1884,  when  Mr.  Pearson  was  continued  in  charge  of  the  New 
York  post-office,  although  President  Cleveland  had  shown  him- 
self in  the  Governor's  chair  a  very  good  friend  of  civil-service 
reform  and  had  said  much  in  its  favor,  nevertheless  I  think  I  may 
venture  on  the  supposition  that  the  reform  he  had  in  mind  was 
reform  among  the  minor  or  subordinate  officers,  the  clerks  or 
messengers,  and  sorters,  and  carriers,  the  inspectors,  and  gaugers. 
The  idea  of  applying  the  principle  to  the  headship  of  the  greatest 
post-office  or  custom-house  in  the  country  was  rather  new  and 
startling.  For  it  is  a  cardinal  rule  of  the  spoils  system  that  it  is 
not  the  nature  of  the  duties  but  the  number  of  men  it  commands 
or  controls  that  constitute  the  importance  of  an  office.  No  spoils- 


man  ever  sincerely  believes  in  non-interference  with  his  subor- 
dinates in  matters  of  politics  on  the  part  of  the  head  of  an  office. 
He  laughs  when  you  tell  him  that  they  are  absolutely  free  to  vote 
as  they  please  ;  that  they  need  not  do  the  political  work  unless 
they  like,  and  may  work  on  whichever  side  they  choose.  He 
feels  sure  that  influence  must  trickle  down  through  the  ranks  and 
keep  the  subordinate  mindful  that  he  owes  his  "  bread  and  but- 
ter "  to  the  party  in  power ;  consequently,  no  matter  how  well 
protected  he  may  be  by  the  rules  against  interference  from  on 
high,  the  mere  fact  that  the  superior  has  power  to  dismiss  has 
immense  importance  in  the  politician's  eyes.  The  bestowal, 
therefore,  of  an  office  employing  many  men,  on  one  who  has  not 
been  active  in  politics  and  had  belonged  to  the  other  party,  and 
with  an  eye  only  to  effective  public  service,  was  in  1884 — and 
may  I  not  say,  still  is  ? — looked  upon  as  an  act  of  great  hardihood 
— a  great  departure  from  sound  and  wholesome  traditions. 

In  my  opinion  it  could  not  have  been  brought  about  but  for 
two  things.  One  was  that  Mr.  Cleveland  not  unnaturally  felt 
grateful  to  the  mugwumps  for  their  support,  for  he  owed  a  great 
deal  of  his  reputation  to  their  labors.  He  was,  therefore,  able  to 
say  to  the  spoilsmen  that  this  was  the  only  thing  they  asked  for, 
and  that  they  must  have  it,  as  the  reward  for  their  political 
activity.  This  was  an  argument  which  every  politician  could 
understand. 

The  other  agency  is  what  I  may  venture  to  call,  for  want  of  a 
better  name,  the  course  of  events,  by  which  I  mean  the  increasing 
exactingness  of  modern  society  in  the  matter  of  business  methods. 
I  think  we  have  owed  a  large  part  of  what  we  have  got  in  the 
way  of  civil-service  reform  to  this  exactingness.  I  believe  we 
shall  some  day  owe  to  it  a  reform  in  the  consular  service.  It  is 
becoming  increasingly  difficult  to  tell  people  what  the  consular 
service  is  for,  and  then  to  keep  your  face  straight  when  showing 
them  how  it  is  filled.  The  world  demands  more  and  more  in  all 
service  some  kind  of  relation  between  your  means  and  your  ends. 

It  is  said,  and  I  believe  with  truth,  that  nothing  has  done  so 
much  to  promote  temperance  as  the  greatly  increased  use  of 
machinery  in  modern  industry.  One  of  the  peculiarities  of  all 
good  machines  is  that  they  cannot  be  managed  by  drunken  men. 
The  touch  of  a  drunkard's  hand  sets  them  wild.  A  very  large 
proportion  of  the  skilled  labor  of  the  world  is  now  employed 


10 

either  in  the  superintendence  or  in  the  aid  of  machinery.  An 
artisan,  therefore,  who  wishes  to  get  and  keep  employment,  has, 
as  a  rule,  to  keep  sober.  The  anger  of  a  mismanaged  machine  is 
so  serious  in  its  consequences  that  no  employer  can  afford  to 
overlook  even  a  single  case  of  intemperance.  The  man  who 
drinks  goes,  and  cannot  come  back.  So  that  by  a  beautiful  pro- 
cess of  artificial  selection  all  the  good  places  of  the  world  are 
naturally  passing  into  the  hands  of  the  sober  men,  a  result  which 
would  probably  never  have  been  brought  about  by  mere  moral 
suasion.  It  has  been  brought  about  by  the  increasing  damage 
done  by  drunkenness,  if  I  may  use  the  expression — a  fine  illus- 
tration, as  I  see  it,  of  the  moral  government  of  the  world,  of  the 
way  in  which  even  the  dark  things  of  our  life  assist  in  the  pro- 
gress of  the  race.  Now,  this  course  of  events,  or  if  you  like  the 
phrase  better,  the  growth  of  business,  is  in  like  manner  making 
for  civil-service  reform.  The  volume  of  affairs,  especially  in  the 
matter  of  the  collection  of  revenue  and  the  carriage  and  distribu- 
tion of  letters,  is  growing  so  large  in  all  modern  civilized  countries, 
that  the  use  of  the  same  men  for  two  different  services,  or  two 
different  kinds  of  work,  is  becoming  more  and  more  difficult,  and 
the  public  is  at  the  same  time  becoming  more  and  more  exacting. 
The  old  custom  of  having  a  man  collect  customs  duties  or  sort 
letters  in  the  daytime  and  work  at  "  politics  •'  in  the  evening  is 
becoming  harder  and  harder  to  maintain.  His  official  work  is 
too  voluminous  ;  his  mistakes  too  serious.  The  contrast  of  this 
system  with  the  increasing  specialization  of  private  business  is  too 
marked.  We  are  becoming  more  and  more  conscious  that  the 
road  to  excellence  or  efficiency  in  almost  every  branch  of  human 
endeavor  lies  through  a  rigid  attention  to  one  thing.  This  is 
true  of  science,  of  literature,  of  art,  of  law,  and  of  medicine  ;  it  is 
also  true  of  business  of  all  kinds.  The  jack-of-all-trades,  once 
an  eminent  and  much  admired  person,  has  been  cast  down  from 
his  high  estate.  His  very  name  is  now  almost  a  synonym  for 
failure  and  incompetency.  The  world  is  insisting  more  and 
more  that  none  of  us  shall  do  more  than  one  thing,  and  more 
and  more  believing  that  the  man  who  tries  to  do  more  than  one 
thing  will  not  succeed.  Therefore,  in  my  belief,  the  political 
office-holder,  the  man  who  both  runs  the  primaries  and  the  con- 
ventions and  collects  the  revenues  and  sorts  the  letters,  is  destined 
to  disappear  at  no  distant  date. 


II 

But,  gentlemen,  we  must  be  careful  about  pushing  too  far  the 
analogy  between  private  and  public  business.  We  know  very 
well  that  if  an  express  company  were  to  select  its  employees  on 
the  ground  of  their  politics  every  four  years,  to  turn  out  its  best 
hands  because  they  were  Republicans  or  Democrats,  or  were  to 
turn  them  out  because  they  had  been  in  their  places  long  enough, 
or  because  it  was  time  to  give  some  other  and  inexperienced  men 
a  chance  at  the  salaries,  or  because  they  were  not  active  enough 
in  some  sort  of  outside  business  or  amusement ;  because,  for 
instance,  they  did  not  play  baseball  or  lawn  tennis  well  enough — 
we  know  that  such  an  express  company  would  soon  come  to 
grief.  Its  business  would  rapidly  decline.  Some  rival  would 
soon  offer  quicker  despatch  and  greater  security,  and  it  would 
either  go  into  bankruptcy  or  apply  to  the  courts  to  be  wound  up. 
All  private  concerns  are  bound  to  use  nothing  but  the  best- 
known  methods  in  the  administration  of  their  affairs,  including 
the  best-known  methods  of  getting  good  service  from  their  em- 
ployees. They  have  to  do  for  them  the  things,  whatever  they  may 
be,  which  experience  of  human  nature  teaches  us  tend  to  secure 
diligence,  honesty,  and  fidelity,  and  these  are,  mainly,  sufficient 
pay,  reasonable  work,  but  above  all  security  of  tenure.  No  cor- 
poration or  firm  can  get  good  service  from  men  who  know  that 
good  service  will  neither  enable  them  to  obtain  promotion  nor 
keep  their  places.  Every  corporation  or  firm  knows  this.  If 
you  go  into  any  great  and  successful  office  or  factory  which  is 
carried  on  for  profit,  and  ask  the  managers  what  their  system  of 
employment  is,  you  will  find  the  principles  and  rules  of  what 
some  of  our  friends  in  Washington  used  to  call  "  snivel-service 
reform  "  in  full  force.  If  you  will,  for  instance,  visit  the  Penn- 
sylvania or  New  York  Central  Railroad,  or  Adams  Express,  or 
any  great  trust  company,  and  ask  them  in  what  manner  they  deal 
with  their  employees,  you  will  not  need  to  read  one  of  our  docu- 
ments. Our  whole  plan  will  be  as  plain  to  you  as  a  pikestaff, 
and  you  will  find  it  far  pleasanter  than  sitting  down  to  study  our 
tracts  or  listen  to  addresses. 

But  the  penalty,  or  sanction,  as  the  jurists  call  it,  which  keeps 
this  system  in  force,  is  failure,  or  insolvency,  or,  in  other  words, 
financial  ruin.  Without  this  every  one  of  them,  I  venture  to 
assert,  would  go  on  just  as  the  government  goes  on.  Much  as  I 
respect  the  president  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad,  or  of  the 


12 

New  York  Central,  or  of  the  United  States  Trust  Company, 
I  am  sure  that  were  it  in  my  power  to  go  to  them  and  tell  them 
that  no  matter  how  they  conducted  their  business,  or  how  many 
losses  they  experienced,  their  deficit  should  always  be  made  up 
to  them,  and  funds  for  their  dividends  should  be  always  supplied 
from  outside  sources,  I  firmly  believe  they  would  lay  aside  all 
restraint  and  establish  the  spoils  system  within  a  very  few 
months. 

In  the  government,  as  you  know,  we  have  no  such  penalty. 
No  matter  how  it  conducts  the  public  business,  the  taxpayer 
makes  up  the  deficit.  But  when  the  government  gets  into  trouble, 
the  gallant  taxpayer  comes  forward  and  asks  how  much  it  needs, 
and  whether  it  will  borrow  the  amount  or  levy  it  in  taxes,  and 
tells  it  to  cheer  up,  that  the  money  is  ready.  Whatever  happens, 
no  matter  who  is  to  blame,  no  matter  by  whose  folly  or  fault  the 
deficit  has  been  wrought,  the  credit  of  the  government  must  not 
suffer.  Consequently,  we  cannot  look  with  any  confidence  to 
any  speedy  change  through  the  mere  course  of  events.  Matters 
will  not  mend  rapidly,  for  business  reasons,  as  they  would  mend 
in  a  factory  or  railroad.  Pressure  has  to  be  brought  to  bear  on 
the  men  in  power  from  the  outside.  Public  opinion  has  to  act  on 
them.  What  interests  them  most  is  not  remote,  but  immediate 
results.  Their  main  interest  is  to  keep  the  party  in  power,  and 
keep  themselves  in  favor  with  the  men  who  make  nominations. 
They  are  not  particularly  troubled  by  hearing  from  you  that  their 
doings  will  in  the  long  run  greatly  injure  the  government.  They 
know  the  government  will  last  their  time  and  somewhat  longer. 
They  will  not  hasten  unless  their  personal  prospects  are  threat- 
ened. This  means  that  agitation,  watchfulness,  and  incessant 
criticism  are  necessary  for  the  advancement  of  the  cause. 

It  does  not  do  for  its  friends  to  trust  to  the  good  intentions  of 
any  man  in  office.  It  does  not  do  to  assume  that  he  is  doing  as 
well  as  he  can.  These  friends  can  never  forget  that  all  the  strong 
influences  of  political  life  are  silently  working  in  Washington  all 
the  time  against  the  change.  It  is  hardly  an  exaggeration  to  say 
that  every  Congressman  who  visits  the  President  puts  in  a  word 
or  exerts  an  influence  of  some  kind  against  it.  Every  President 
who  wishes  to  exert  any  influence  in  legislation  finds  himself 
under  a  constant  temptation  to  disregard  it.  In  fact,  the  minute 
he  announces,  or  it  appears,  that  he  greatly  desires  the  passage  of 


'3 

a  certain  measure,  he,  if  I  may  use  the  expression,  appears  to 
Congressmen  to  announce  that  he  has  offices  for  sale,  and  asks 
for  bids.  Many  of  them  say  at  once  :  "  Now  is  our  chance  ;  if  the 
old  man  wants  our  votes,  he  can  have  them,  but  he  must  pay  his 
price."  The  old  custom  of  appealing  to  the  public  or  forcing  legis- 
lation through  the  pressure  of  popular  opinion  seems  wellnigh  to 
have  died  out.  The  method  which  has  taken  its  place  is  just  as 
corrupt  and  as  hostile  to  efficient  public  service  as  if  money  passed 
instead  of  office.  The  more,  too,  a  President  is  interested  in  pub- 
lic affairs,  and  the  more  he  wishes  to  see  his  ideas  embodied  in 
legislation,  the  stronger  is  the  temptation  to  resort  to  this  cheap 
and  easy  method  of  influencing  congressional  action.  Conse- 
quently, as  long  as  there  remains  a  single  non-political  office  out- 
side the  rules,  so  long  will  the  occasion  for  agitation  and  criticism 
continue.  To  escape  criticism  has  been  the  great  ambition  of 
rulers  ever  since  civilized  societies  were  founded,  but  we  owe 
everything  worth  having,  both  in  political  and  social  life,  to  the 
fact  that  they  have  never  succeeded. 

There  are  about  two  hundred  thousand  offices  in  the  service  of 
the  United  States.  Of  these  about  forty  three  thousand  have 
been  brought  under  the  rules.  A  large  proportion  of  the 
remainder  are  postmasters.  But  no  rational  man  who  was  not 
familiar  with  the  history  of  American  politics  would  suppose  that 
the  despatch  of  the  mails  and  the  distribution  of  letters  was  the 
chief  function  of  these  officers,  or,  indeed,  one  of  their  duties  at 
all.  They  seem  to  exist  over  a  large  part  of  the  country  as  the 
reward  for  political  activity  and  signs  of  victory.  In  many  cases 
an  election  does  not  seem  won  unless  the  post-office  has  changed 
hands.  After  the  last  presidential  canvass,  an  incident  occurred 
in  Ohio,  I  think,  which  illustrated  in  an  amusing  way  the  strong- 
hold on  the  popular  mind  of  the  idea  that  the  post-office  is  simply 
a  part  of  the  spoils  of  war.  A  German  who  held  a  post-office  in 
Ohio  under  President  Cleveland  was  turned  out  by  President 
Harrison,  and  a  soldier's  widow  put  in  his  place.  When  Presi- 
dent Cleveland  was  re-elected,  as  soon  as  the  decisive  returns 
reached  the  village,  the  German  ran  down  to  the  post-office  and 
said  to  the  widow  :  "  We  have  won  the  election  ;  the  post-office 
is  mine."  And  she  was  so  keenly  alive  to  the  proprieties  of  the 
occasion  that  she  promptly  packed  up  her  papers  and  handed  the 
office  over  to  him  that  very  night,  and  had  to  be  reminded  from 


'4 

Washington  the  next  day  that  she  was  really  still  in  office,  and 
was  responsible  for  the  letters  and  accounts. 

Now,  gentlemen,  I  do  not  need  to  go  again  here  over  all  the 
arguments  against  this  state  of  things.  You  have  heard  over  and 
over  of  the  terrible  and  yet  ridiculous  demands  made  on  the  time 
and  strength  of  the  incoming  President  and  his  postmaster-gen- 
eral by  the  redistribution  of  these  offices  among  his  followers. 
At  the  beginning  of  every  new  administration,  the  post-offices 
take  up  fully  three  months  of  the  time  of  the  postmaster-general, 
and  nearly  as  much  of  that  of  the  President.  You  do  not  need 
to  be  reminded  of  all  this,  but  I  think  a  great  many  people  are 
puzzled  by  the  question  how  the  trouble  is  to  be  avoided.  The 
post-offices  have  to  be  filled  ;  the  filling  of  the  smaller  ones,  the 
fourth-class  offices,  as  they  are  called,  which  are  mostly  small 
affairs,  takes  nearly  as  much  trouble  as  the  filling  of  the  larger 
ones.  As  they  are  often  annexed  to  a  store,  and  as  there  are  often 
only  two  men  in  the  place  capable  of  filling  them,  the  Republican 
and  the  Democrat,  it  would  be  impossible  to  put  them  under  the 
rules,  and  award  them  to  competitive  examination.  So  all  sorts 
of  plans,  including  popular  election,  have  been  suggested  for  the 
selection  of  candidates,  but  the  simplest  expedient  of  all  has,  I 
think,  been  neglected  ;  I  mean  the  plan  of  not  making  vacancies. 
Our  own  is  the  only  country  in  the  civilized  world  in  which  the 
selection  of  postmasters,  gives  any  trouble,  and  they  have  every- 
where to  be  selected  from  much  the  same  material.  The  reason 
is  that  we  are  the  only  civilized  country  in  which  vacancies  occur, 
except  through  death,  resignation,  or  misconduct.  Vacancies 
which  occur  from  these  three  causes  are,  of  course,  easily  man- 
aged. It  does  not  trouble  any  postmaster-general  to  fill  them. 
They  are  necessarily  comparatively  few  in  number,  and  they  have 
the  supreme  merit  of  being  in  the  popular  eyes  what  I  may  call 
business  vacancies — that  is,  vacancies  which  cannot  be  avoided 
or  which  the  good  of  the  service  calls  for. 

We  must  never  forget  that  the  manner  of  filling  offices  is  a  con- 
stant lesson  in  government  to  the  bulk  of  the  people,  and  worth 
any  number  of  manuals  or  treatises  or  schoolbooks.  The  very 
worst  effect  of  the  spoils  system — an  effect  which  we  see  in  our 
large  cities  more  markedly  than  elsewhere — is  the  way  it  teaches 
the  public  to  separate  duties  from  public  offices,  to  think  of 
offices  as  places  to  which  no  duties  are  attached,  or  in  which  the 


'5 

duties  play  a  subordinate  part  to  the  privileges.  In  truth,  I  may 
ask,  can  any  people  receive  a  worse  lesson  in  politics  than  the 
spectacle  of  fitness  disregarded  or  treated  as  of  secondary  im- 
portance by  its  public  men,  and,  in  fact,  by  everybody  who  has  to 
do  with  the  filling  of  places  ?  Now,  in  no  way  is  this  lesson  taught 
so  widely  as  by  the  filling  and  unfilling  of  our  post-offices.  The 
rural  population,  as  I  remarked  in  the  beginning,  sees  little  or 
nothing  of  the  spoils  system  where  it  most  abounds,  in  the 
great  cities.  And  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  country  post-offices 
call  for  extraordinary  talent  or  training.  What  I  do  say  is  that 
the  government  can  as  readily  as  in  any  other  offices  indicate  by 
its  manner  of  filling  them  and  making  vacancies  in  them  its  prin- 
ciple of  administration,  its  way  of  looking  at  the  public  service. 
When  it  turns  the  postmaster  out,  no  matter  how  efficient  he  may 
have  been,  at  the  end  of  four  years,  and  appoints  another  who 
knows  nothing  of  post-office  business  in  his  place,  on  account 
of  his  political  activity,  it  says  as  plainly  as  possible  to  the  people  : 
"  This  office  exists  primarily  for  the  purpose  of  rewarding  election- 
eering services.  The  manner  in  which  it  distributes  your  letters 
and  carries  your  mails  is  a  secondary  consideration."  He  must  be 
a  stupid  rustic  indeed  who  does  not  cover  the  whole  public  service 
with  this  view  of  the  post-office  and  see  in  the  whole  machinery  of 
government  a  ponderous  engine  for  distributing  salaries  among 
politicians.  The  Tammany  men  whom  we  all  now  abuse  so  much 
have  simply  carried  the  spoils  system  one  step  farther  than  the 
Federal  administration,  and  avow  it  a  little  more  cynically.  Con- 
sequently, as  long  as  post-offices  remain  an  instrument  of  corrup- 
tion, we  shall  never  get  the  competitive  system  really  rooted 
in  the  popular  mind. 

I  know  the  continuance  in  office  of  a  postmaster  who  is  not  in 
sympathy  with  the  administration  for  the  time  being,  or  who 
cares  nothing  about  politics,  is  now  to  the  public  of  the  rural  dis- 
tricts a  strange  spectacle,  and  the  reason  is  that  the  rural  man  has 
never  seen  any  other.  Half  the  work  of  life  is  done  by  the  asso- 
ciation of  ideas.  A  man  who  only  knew  of  post-offices  as  places 
where  the  public  mails  were  opened,  sorted,  and  distributed  would 
be  amused  by  our  present  system.  But  if  he  saw  our  system 
at  work  for  a  good  many  years,  he  would  by  mere  familiarity  be 
brought  to  see  nothing  peculiar  about  it.  Two  reform  Presidents 
in  succession  could  certainly  bring  the  people  back  to  the  old 


i6 

way  of  looking  at  post-offices  solely  as  places  for  the  distribution 
of  correspondence.  I  know  very  well  that  there  still  lingers 
in  the  minds  of  a  great  many  politicians  the  notion  that  no  man 
will  serve  the  government  faithfully  in  any  office,  no  matter 
how  small,  who  has  not  at  least  voted  for  the  party  in  power,  and 
that  this  ought  to  furnish,  even  from  the  reformer's  point  of  view, 
a  justification  for  making  a  "clean  sweep"  on  every  change  of 
administration.  Nothing  could  better  illustrate  than  this  view  the 
extent  to  which  the  spoils  system  has  banished  from  people's 
minds  the  idea  of  country  as  having  the  first  claim  on  their 
allegiance,  and  substituted  that  of  party.  For,  of  course,  the  man 
who  in  the  service  of  his  government  wilfully  failed  in  his  duty  to 
it,  damaged  its  property,  betrayed  its  interests,  did  things  and  left 
things  undone  to  bring  it  into  discredit,  because  the  administra- 
tion did  not  belong  to  his  party,  would  be  just  as  much  a  traitor 
as  if  he  did  all  this  to  oblige  a  foreign  enemy.  If  an  army  officer 
or  a  naval  officer  were  to  execute  his  orders  slackly  because  he 
disliked  the  party  in  power,  we  should  all  agree  that  he  deserved 
to  be  shot,  and  we  are  all  perfectly  confident  that  no  such  man 
could  be  found  in  either  the  army  or  navy,  either  in  war  or  peace. 
Nothing  would  get  us  to  believe  that  the  officers  of  the  Coast 
Survey  and  Naval  Observation  would  make  mistakes  in  their  com- 
putations, play  tricks  with  their  telescopes  or  theodolites,  in  order 
to  bring  the  existing  administration  into  disrepute,  and  yet  many 
of  us  try  to  persuade  ourselves  that  if  you  left  men  permanently 
in  the  custom-house  or  post-office,  with  good  wages  and  with 
security  of  tenure,  they  would,  whenever  a  President  was  elected 
they  did  not  like,  begin  to  undervalue  imported  goods,  cheat  in 
the  weighing,  put  letters  into  the  wrong  boxes,  or  throw  them  into 
the  sewers  instead  of  delivering  them.  Those  who  take  this  view 
of  the  American  civil  service  ought  to  hide  their  heads  for  shame 
and  yet  they  are  very  conspicuous  and  often  very  noisy. 

Henry  G.  Pearson  was  born  in  the  city  of  New  York,  July  29, 
1844.  His  father,  a  native  of  Philadelphia,  was  a  printer  ;  his 
mother  was  the  daughter  of  Mr.  Thomas,  an  old  merchant  of  this 
city,  who  lived  on  State  Street,  in  whose  house  Mr.  Pearson  was 
born.  His  father  was  one  of  the  California  Argonauts  of  '49. 
In  crossing  the  isthmus  he  contracted  a  fever  and  died  shortly 
after  his  arrival  at  San  Francisco.  Mr.  Pearson's  mother  died 
when  he  was  but  fourteen  years  old,  when  the  young  man  started 


17 

out  for  himself  in  the  battle  of  life.  Michael  Hoffman,  then 
deputy  collector  of  the  port,  secured  for  the  boy  a  minor  place  in 
the  custom-house,  where  he  remained  until  some  time  in  the 
summer  of  1860,  when  Mr.  Hoffman  gave  him  a  note  to  Gen. 
Dix,  then  postmaster,  who  appointed  him  to  a  place  in  the  post- 
office.  In  1862,  upon  the  establishment  of  the  railway  mail  ser- 
vice, he  was  detailed  as  a  postal  clerk  on  the  route  between  New 
York  and  Washington.  He  drew  the  plans  of  the  first  postal  car, 
which  was  built  under  his  supervision.  He  remained  in  the  rail- 
way postal  service,  becoming  the  chief  clerk  on  the  route 
between  New  York  and  Washington,  until  February,  1873,  when 
he  was  appointed  superintendent  of  mails  in  the  New  York 
post-office. 

Upon  the  appointment  of  Bankson  T.  Morgan  to  the  position 
of  police  judge,  Mr.  Pearson  was  made  assistant  postmaster  by 
Postmaster  James,  in  July,  1873.  On  the  7th  of  March,  1881, 
when  Postmaster  James  was  called  to  Washington  by  Gen. 
Garfield  as  postmaster-general,  Mr.  Pearson  was  appointed  acting 
postmaster,  and  a  few  weeks  later  postmaster  of  New  York  by 
President  Garfield.  He  was  immediately  confirmed  by  the  Senate, 
and  assumed  the  duties  of  postmaster  April  i,  1881.  He  was 
reappointed  by  President  Cleveland  in  April,  1885,  and  confirmed 
by  the  Senate.  He  died  April  20,  1889,  before  the  expiration  of 
his  term  of  office,  but  after  his  successor,  Cornelius  Van  Cott, 
had  been  nominated  by  President  Harrison  and  confirmed  by  the 
Senate. 

This  is  the  whole  record  of  his  official  career.  There  would, 
as  I  began  by  saying,  be  nothing  very  remarkable  about  it  but  for 
one  thing — that  he  was  appointed,  against  all  precedents,  because 
he  was  the  fittest  man,  and  that  he  devoted  himself  during  his 
whole  term  of  service  to  the  efficient  performance  of  a  postmaster's 
work  and  to  nothing  else.  If  you  suppose  that  his  reappoint- 
ment  was  easily  obtained,  you  would  be  very  much  mistaken.  It 
was  bitterly  opposed,  and  it  seemed  at  times  on  the  point  of  mis- 
carriage. I  think  all  the  working  politicians  considered  the  office 
in  such  hands  absolutely  thrown  away,  and  they  resorted  to  such 
means  as  were  within  their  reach  to  prevent  it.  Among  these 
means  were  "charges" — I  forget  what  they  were,  but  like  all 
charges  made  for  such  purposes,  they  were  very  complete ;  in 
fact,  they  were  too  complete.  They  reminded  me  of  the  campaign 


i8 

charge  made  against  Schuyler  Colfax.  Not  only  did  this  gentle- 
man repel  one-armed  soldiers  when  they  called  on  him,  but  he 
insisted  on  their  sending  in  their  cards  by  a  lackey  in  livery  on  a 
silver  salver,  and  when  the  poor  soldier  had  no  card  he  was  sent 
away  sorrowful.  I  was,  I  remember,  in  Washington  when  the 
charges  were  made.  I  heard  of  them  from  President  Cleveland, 
and  learned  from  him  that  they  must  be  answered.  I  accordingly 
telegraphed  for  Mr.  Pearson  to  come  on,  and  he  came,  and  Mr. 
Dorman  B.  Eaton  and  I  went  to  see  the  postmaster-general  about 
them.  Pearson  very  soon  disposed  of  them  when  he  reached 
Washington,  and  was  then  allowed  to  take  possession  of  his  office. 
I  saw  him  often  during  the  remaining  years  of  it,  and  it  was  a 
great  treat  to  see  an  official  who  was  solely  occupied  with  his 
official  duties  and  who  knew  nothing  and  cared  nothing  about 
politics.  He  was  interesting  to  me  as  probably  the  only  one  of  the 
few  civil  officers  of  the  United  States  government  of  whom  it 
could  be  said  that  his  sole  preoccupation  was  the  good  of  the 
service.  But  no  one  must  imagine  that  he  lay  in  a  bed  of  roses. 
He  and  I  were  members  of  a  small  party  who  went  together  to 
Gettysburg  in  1888  to  celebrate  the  twenty-fifth  anniversary  of 
the  battle.  It  was  the  summer  before  the  election.  He  had 
had  a  full  trial  of  the  place  and  of  the  tenure  under  which  he  held 
it,  and  he  was  not  cheerful.  He  had  found  himself  more  or  less 
during  the  whole  of  it  an  intruder,  whose  success  but  few  political 
men  desired,  and  to  which  hardly  one  was  willing  to  contribute. 
He  complained  of  a  good  deal  of  snubbing  in  high  quarters,  of 
indifference  to  his  applications  for  better  machinery  or  more  help, 
and  of  an  apparent  desire  to  prevent  such  a  thing  as  his  appoint- 
ment occurring  again. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  has  not  occurred  again.  I  see  no  sign  of 
it.  His  immediate  successor  was  a  livery-stable  keeper,  and  his 
again  a  lawyer,  who  knew  nothing  of  post-offices  except  to  draw 
his  mail.  I  have  not  a  word  to  say  against  either  of  them,  except 
that  they  were  not  the  stuff  out  of  which  you  can  make  post- 
masters. If  either  of  them  was  fit  for  the  place,  then  the  business 
experience  of  the  human  race  must  be  at  fault.  Pearson  got  it 
because  he  had  risen  to  it  from  the  ranks,  because  he  had  under- 
gone long  training  for  it,  and  because  he  proved  by  his 
administration  of  it  that  the  plan  on  which  he  was  appointed 
was  the  right  plan.  But  all  my  talks  with  him,  on  that  trip,  con- 


'9 

vinced  me  that  it  was  mainly  as  a  martyr  that  he  was  to  serve  the 
cause.  His  health  was  doubtless  already  beginning  to  fail,  and 
his  hopefulness,  I  fear,  was  deserting  him,  but  there  seemed  no 
abatement  in  his  devotion  to  his  duties.  He  has  often  reminded 
me  since  of  a  passage  in  Merivale's  History  of  the  Romans,  which 
I  think  throws  a  flood  of  light  on  that  perhaps  most  mysterious  of 
all  historical  questions,  the  question  why  it  took  the  Roman 
Empire  so  long  to  fall.  Do  not  think  I  am  comparing  small 
things  with  great,  or  trying  to  make  a  paradox  when  I  quote  him. 
He  says,  speaking  of  the  condition  of  Roman  morality  under  the 
Emperors  : 

"  The  history  of  the  Caesars  presents  to  us  a  constant  succession 
of  brave,  patient,  resolute,  and  faithful  soldiers,  men  deeply  im- 
pressed with  the  sense  of  duty,  superior  to  vanity,  despisers  of 
boasting,  content  to  toil  in  obscurity  and  shed  their  blood  on  the 
frontiers  of  the  empire,  unrepining  at  the  cold  mistrust  of  their 
masters,  not  clamorous  for  the  honors  so  sparingly  awarded  them, 
but  satisfied  in  the  daily  work  of  their  hands,  and  full  of  faith  in 
the  national  destiny  which  they  were  daily  accomplishing." 

I  have  called  the  prolonged  decay  of  the  Roman  Empire,  the 
great  length  of  time  it  took  to  go  to  pieces,  "mysterious,"  because 
all  the  known  and  visible  reasons  of  downfall  were  so  marked  and 
so  strong,  such  as  the  incessant  and  bloody  contests  at  Rome  for 
the  imperial  purple,  the  increasing  power  of  the  military  garrison 
of  the  capital  over  government,  and  the  increasing  pressure  of 
the  barbarian  hordes  on  every  frontier.  Well,  what  made  the 
downfall  of  this  wonderful  organization  so  slow  was  undoubtedly 
the  fidelity  and  efficiency  of  the  subordinate  officers  of  the  gov- 
ernment, both  civil  and  military.  They  were  distinctly  "  out  of 
politics."  The  Caesars  might  come  and  go,  and  the  purple  might 
even  now  and  then  be  put  to  auction,  and  the  great  men  at  Rome 
might  betray  each  other  and  cut  each  other's  throats  as  much  as 
they  pleased,  but  all  through  that  vast  dominion,  from  Mount  At- 
las to  Hadrian's  Wall,  the  minor  officers  stuck  to  their  posts  and 
did  their  duty.  Justice  was  well  administered,  letters  were  faith- 
fully carried,  great  roads,  of  which  we  see  the  remains  to  this  day, 
were  made  in  every  direction,  barbarians  were  civilized,  and  great 
cities  and  villages  and  temples  arose  in  every  province.  I 
am  not  defending  this  civilization  or  recommending  it.  I  am 
simply  saying  that  it  could  not  have  flourished  as  it  did,  or  have 


20 

lasted  as  long  as  it  did,  without  the  extraordinary  fidelity  and 
efficiency  of  the  subordinated  office-holders. 

And,  if  I  may  come  down  to  modern  times  for  my  illustrations, 
let  me  say  that,  although  the  remoter  causes  were  numerous  and 
powerful,  the  immediate  cause  of  the  downfall  of  the  old  French 
monarchy  was  the  venality  and  incapacity  of  the  minor  servants 
of  the  crown.  It  was  their  oppression  and  injustice  and  determi- 
nation to  feather  their  nests  which  roused  the  peasantry  to  mad- 
ness and  made  the  Revolution  bloody,  for  it  was  they,  not  the 
gentry,  who  ruled  the  country  districts.  And  I  don't  think  I  ex- 
aggerate when  I  say  that  it  was  her  wonderful  bureaucracy,  poor, 
competent,  upright,  and  secure,  which  prepared  Prussia  to  con- 
vert herself,  when  the  time  came,  into  the  German  Empire.  A 
more  striking  illustration  still  is  the  British  Empire  in  India, 
where  millions  of  population  are  ruled  in  perfect  peace  and  order 
by  a  few  hundred  civil  servants,  who  are  selected  for  their  ca- 
pacity, kept  in  office  during  good  behavior,  and  rewarded  by  pro- 
motion and  pensions,  whose  integrity  as  a  body,  although  living 
among  a  barbarous  and  subject  population  in  remote  districts, 
has  never  been  impeached.  No  more  wonderful  example  of  what 
a  civil  service,  organized  on  high  principles,  can  do  for  a  govern- 
ment, was  ever  seen  than  this  Indian  civil  service  is. 

I  say  wonderful,  and  yet  when  we  consider  the  matter  a  little, 
it  is  not  so  very  wonderful  after  all.  For  we  must  remember  that 
the  state,  as  an  organization,  is  the  civil  service.  What  does  any 
of  us  know  of  the  state  but  through  its  civil  service  ?  What  would 
laws  be  but  literature  if  it  were  not  for  the  judges,  and  marshals, 
and  sheriffs,  and  the  tax  collectors,  and  the  policemen  ?  They 
represent  the  state  to  the  citizen.  It  is  through  them  that  we  get 
at  its  morality  and  its  power ;  that  we  learn  to  respect  or  despise 
it.  It  has  been  said,  and  truly  said,  that  the  millions  who  pour 
into  our  cities  from  Europe,  ignorant  both  of  our  laws  and 
language,  learn  all  they  know  of  our  government  and  polity  from 
the  police  justice  and  police  captain  ;  but  this  is  in  a  measure  true 
of  us  all.  We  form  our  opinion  of  the  government  of  the  day 
from  what  we  see  and  know  of  its  officers.  When  we  determine 
to  turn  one  administration  out  and  put  another  one  in  its  place,  it 
is  largely  because  we  think  it  will  give  us  better  official  service. 
In  truth,  the  state,  apart  from  its  officers,  may  be  said  to  be  merely 
a  patriot's  dream.  It  is  the  civil  service  which  makes  it  blood  and 


21 

bones,  and  which  makes  it  palpable  and  concrete,  lovable  or  un- 
lovable, something  to  be  proud  of,  or  something  to  be  ashamed 
of.  If  you  will  ask  yourselves  what  the  things  are  in  our  politics 
during  the  last  thirty  years  which  have  made  you  either  ashamed 
or  proud  of  your  country,  you  will  find  it  is  the  behavior  of  certain 
men  in  the  employment  of  the  government  or  representing  the 
government.  A  state  grows,  flourishes,  and  lasts,  or  declines  and 
perishes  through  its  servants.  A  good  civil  service  will  often  ar- 
rest the  progress,  for  great  periods,  of  very  potent  causes  of  decay. 
A  bad  one  will  make  the  best  constitution  ever  formed  and  the 
best  laws  ever  enacted  powerless  to  help  or  save  any  polity,  how- 
ever just,  humane,  or  enlightened.  When  we  consider  in  what  a 
condition  of  mental  flux  we  are  just  now  upon  nearly  everything 
that  holds  civilized  men  together — our  political  economy  and 
morality  and  religion, — what  a  very  large  population  we  have  which 
is  American  only  in  name,  what  a  very  large  body  of  Americans 
we  have  who  care  nothing  about  either  law  or  political  purity  as 
long  as  it  stands  in  the  way  of  their  getting  rich,  I  thing  that  you 
will  agree  with  me  that  we  cannot  be  in  too  great  haste  to  give 
permanence,  and  the  efficiency  which  comes  from  permanence,  to 
the  machinery  of  government.  We  civil-service  reformers  have 
been  accused  a  good  deal  of  making  a  great  fuss  about  a  very 
small  matter,  but  I  think  the  events  of  each  day  show  us  more 
and  more  clearly  that  our  matter  is  the  greatest  of  all  matters  ; 
that  if  we  are  to  preserve  our  form  of  government,  and  our  social 
organization  intact,  and  at  the  same  time  to  preserve  our  dignity 
and  respectability  in  the  eyes  of  the  world,  it  is  to  be  done,  not  by 
increasing  our  navy  and  our  army,  but  by  giving  the  govern- 
ment the  kind  of  service  which  the  experience  of  mankind  has 
shown  to  be  the  best.  And  it  is  as  an  example  of  the  kind  of  men 
who  should  compose  that  service,  in  its  higher  no  less  than  in  its 
lower  branches,  that  I  have  set  Henry  G.  Pearson  before  you  to- 
night. 


